The Jungle Girl Part 13

A Gurkha servant with the ugly, cheery face of his race appeared and was ordered to bring three whiskeys and sodas.

"Ranga's not a bad place if you can stand the loneliness," continued the Major. "Are you fond of shooting."

"Yes, sir, awfully."

"Hooray! That's good," cried Burke. "Now we'll have someone to go down to the jungle and shoot for the Mess. We want a change from tinned Army rations and the tough ould hins that these benighted haythins call chickens."

"Yes, you'll be a G.o.dsend to us if you're a good shot, Wargrave," added the Commandant. "We never get meat here unless someone shoots a stag or a buck in the jungle; and for that we generally have to rely on Dermot.

But he is away such a lot, wandering along the frontier, keeping an eye on the peace of the Border. Now we'll be able to look to you. We have three transport elephants with the detachment, all steady to shoot from."

Frank was delighted.

"I'd love to go into the jungle if you'd let me, sir."

"Yes, I'll be glad if you do. There's not much work for you here; and this is a dull place for a youngster unless he's keen on sport. I'm not, myself; and Burke's as blind as a bat. But you can always have an elephant when they aren't wanted to bring up supplies from the railway."

The subaltern thanked him gratefully and inwardly decided that his new commanding officer was a great improvement on Colonel Trevor.

"Now, Burke, I'm off to my bungalow. Show Wargrave his quarters," said the Major rising. "See you at dinner."

Burke showed the subaltern his room, one of the four into which the Mess was divided. Like the doctor's quarters, it was at one end of the building, the centre apartment being the officers' anteroom and dining-room. Frank found that his "boy," with the ready deftness of Indian servants, had unpacked his trunks, hung up his clothes and stowed his various belongings about the scantily-furnished room. He had stood Violet's photo on the one rickety table and laid out his Master's white mess uniform on the small iron cot.

Major Hunt, Wargrave learned, lived in a bungalow a few hundred yards away, but, being unmarried, took his meals in the Mess. The Indian officers and sepoys of the detachment were quartered in barracks in the Fort.

Frank dressed and entered the anteroom or officers' sitting-room, from which a door led into the messroom. Both apartments were poorly furnished, but the walls were adorned with the skulls and skins of many beasts of the jungle, presented by Colonel Dermot, as Frank learned.

Shelves filled with books ran across one end of the anteroom.

As the interior of the Mess was rather hot at that time of year--though to Wargrave it seemed very cool after Rohar--the dinner-table was laid on the verandah; and while the officers sat at their meal the pleasant mountain breeze played about them. Frank thought with grat.i.tude of his escape from the burning heat which at that moment was tormenting the hundreds of millions in the furnace of the Plains of India stretching away from the foot of the cool hills.

The meal was not luxurious, for it consisted almost exclusively of tinned provisions, fresh meat being unprocurable in Ranga Duar--except fowls of exceeding toughness--and vegetables and bread being rare dainties.

During dinner Wargrave learned how completely isolated his new station was. Their only European neighbours were the planters on tea-gardens scattered about in the great forest below, the nearest thirty miles off.

The few visitors that Ranga Duar saw in the year were the General on his annual inspection, an occasional official of the Indian Civil Service, the Public Works or the Forest Department, or some planter friend of the Dermots.

The reason of the existence of this outpost and its garrison was the guarding of the _duars_, or pa.s.ses, through the Himalayas against raiders from Bhutan, that little-known independent State lying between Tibet and the Bengal border. Its frontier was only two miles from, and a few thousand feet above, Ranga Duar.

"You are just in time for our one yearly burst of gaiety, Wargrave,"

said the Commandant, "the visit of the Deb Zimpun."

"What on earth is that, sir?" asked the subaltern.

"Sounds like a new disease, doesn't it?" said Burke laughing. "But it isn't. The Deb Zimpun is a gintleman av high degree, the Heridithary Cup Bearer to the Deb Raja."

"To the what?" demanded the bewildered Frank.

Major Hunt smiled.

"Bhutan is supposed to be ruled by a temporal monarch called the Deb Raja and also by a spiritual one, known in India as the Durma Raja. In reality it is under the sway of the most powerful of the several great feudal lords of the land, the Tongsa Penlop or Chief of Tongsa, whom we regard as the Maharajah of Bhutan. He has placed himself, as far only as the foreign relations of the country go, under the suzerainty of the Government of India; and in return we grant him a subsidy of a _lakh_ of rupees a year. It used to be fifty thousand, but the sum was doubled years ago. To get the money one of the State Council comes every year.

He is an official called the Deb Zimpun."

"Faith! he's a rum old beggar, Wargrave," broke in Burke. "Looks like the Pope av Rome in his thriple crown, for he wears a high gold-edged cap and a flowing red robe av Chinese silk, out av which sticks a pair av hairy bare legs."

"The Political Officer receives him in _durbar_; and we furnish a Guard of Honour. The Colonel gives a dinner to him and us, and we have another spread in the Mess. That reminds me. I suppose Dermot will be going into the jungle soon to shoot for the pot, as the _durbar_ is next week.

You'd better get him to take you. You can have one of our elephants and provide for our larder."

"Thanks very much, Major," said the delighted subaltern. "The Colonel promised to let me accompany him and lend me a rifle."

When he went to his room that night the subaltern turned up the oil lamp that lighted it and before he undressed sat down before Violet's photograph. As he looked at it he thought affectionately and a little sadly of the lonely woman so far away from him now. He pitied her for the isolation in which she lived, an isolation far completer than his own, for she had few friends, no intimates, and a husband worse than a stranger in his lack of understanding of her. Surely it would be only right to take her from such a man, right to give her a fresh chance of finding the happiness that she had missed; for the warm-hearted, intelligent and artistic-natured woman would be far happier with him in this beautiful spot, remote from the world though it was. And his new comrades would appeal to her, Dermot, strong, capable, one who would always stand out from his fellows; Hunt grave, kindly, well-read; Burke witty, clever and good-hearted. And, little though Violet cared for her own s.e.x, as a rule, surely in Mrs. Dermot she would find a friend. This happy wife, this loving mother, was so sweet and sympathetic that she would win the older woman's liking, while the two delightful children would take her heart by storm. Poor, lonely Violet, so beautiful, so ill-fated! Frank sighed as he took up her portrait and kissed it.

When he extinguished the lamp and lay down in bed it was pleasant, after the heat in Rohar, to find it so cool that he was obliged to pull a blanket over him. Only those who have endured the torment of hot nights in the tropics can appreciate his thankfulness as in the silence broken only by the monotonous cry of the nightjars he drowsed contentedly to sleep. Already he was reconciled to Ranga Duar.

CHAPTER VII

IN THE TERAI JUNGLE

In the pleasant light of the morning the little outpost looked as charming to Wargrave as it had done on the previous evening. Above Ranga Duar the mountains towered to the pale blue sky, while below it the foot-hills fell in steps to the broad sea of foliage of the great forest stretching away to the distant plains seen vaguely through the haze. The horse-shoe hollow in which the tiny station was set was bowered in vegetation. The gardens glowed with the varied hues of flowers, and were bounded by hedges of wild roses. The road and paths were bordered by the tall, graceful plumes of the bamboo and shaded by giant mango and banyan trees, their boughs clothed with orchids.

Frank had noticed the previous day that the Fort, barracks and bungalows were all newly built, and he learned that during the great war which had raged along the frontiers of India five years before, the post had been fiercely attacked by an army of Chinese and Bhutanese and the little station practically wiped out of existence, although victory had finally rested with the few survivors of the garrison.

From the first the subaltern took a great liking to the tall Punjaubi Mahommedan and hook-nosed, fair-skinned Pathan native officers and sepoys of the detachment. The work was light and scarcely required two British officers; and Frank soon found that Major Hunt, who seemed driven by a demon of quiet energy, preferred to do most of it himself.

Frank got the impression that to the elder man occupation was an anodyne for some secret sorrow. Although the subaltern had no wish to shirk his duty he could not but be glad that his superior officer seemed always ready to dispense with his aid, for thus he would find it easier to get permission to go shooting.

His first excursion into the jungle was arranged at dinner at the Dermots' house on his second evening in Ranga Duar. The Colonel proposed to take him out on the following Monday, for on the next day the _Deb Zimpun_ would arrive.

"He always brings a big train of Bhuttias with him, eighty swordsmen as an escort to the small army of coolies necessary to carry a hundred thousand silver rupees in boxes over the Himalayan pa.s.ses. I like to give them the flesh of a few _sambhur_ stags as a treat," said the Colonel.

"Hiven hilp ye av ye bring any _sambhur_ flesh to the Mess, Wargrave,"

said Burke. "We want something we can get our teeth into. No, we expect a _khakur_ from you."

"What's a _khakur_?" asked Frank.

"It's the _muntjac_ or barking deer," replied Dermot. "You wouldn't know it if you haven't shot in forests. It gets its English name from its call, which is not unlike a dog's bark."

"Whin ye hear one saying '_Wonk! Wonk!_' in the jungle, Wargrave, get up the nearest tree; for the _khakur_ is warning all whom it may concern that there's a tiger in the immajit vicinity."

Frank had already learned to distrust most of Burke's statements on sport, for the doctor was an inveterate joker. So he looked to the Political Officer for confirmation.

"Yes, it's supposed to be the case," agreed the Colonel. "And I've more than once heard a tiger loudly express his annoyance when a _khakur_ barked as he was trying to sneak by unnoticed. There's a barking-deer."

He pointed to the well-mounted head of a small deer on the wall of the dining-room.

"Whom do you expect up for the Durbar, Mrs. Dermot?" asked Major Hunt.

"Only Mr. Carter, the Sub-divisional Officer, and probably Mr. Benson."

"Eh--is--isn't Miss Benson coming too?" asked the doctor in a hesitating manner so unlike his usual cheery and a.s.sured self that Frank looked at him. It seemed to him that Burke was blushing.